Reporting on English and Welsh wines

Chateau Tooting is one of my favourite London oddities. They collect grapes from gardens and allotments in London and elsewhere at a fixed time and a designated place (today it was in a sidestreet in Clapham) and then dispatch them to an established vineyard, Halfpenny Green in Shropshire to be made into surprisingly good wine. This year I arrived with naked humility. No grapes. My half a dozen mature vines which I have been fondly tended after reading numerous books decided to have a miserable harvest and what they did produce was wiped out by powdery mildew. Then I meet Marcella Grazette, a mental health manager from Ilford who brought along 39 kilos of healthy looking grapes, enough to make 20 bottles. And – wait for it – all produced from a single vine which she hardly ever tends. Ouch!

But that’s Chateau Tooting. It breaks all the rules but somehow works. No one I spoke to today, apart from one, even knew what variety their grapes were. Alan Frankham from Purley bought a vine six years ago from a garden centre having been inspired by a talk at Denbies vineyard in Dorking which produced 23 kilos this year, just over 11 bottles. Jilly Hanson from nearby Tooting Common produced 11.2 kilos from a single vine and Diana Kerr from Fulham 9 kilos from a single vine.

Richard Sharp – who started the project with his friend Paul (photo, right) – managed 8 kilos this year but added that Furzedown Primary School produced some from a Rondo vine and he also got some from the greenhouse at Brockwell Lido. The success of the scheme has prompted the two pioneers to start expanding. They are marketing some of their surplus bottles – those that are not acquired by the growers who have first choice – to local shops, restaurants and markets together with bottles produced by other cooperatives associated with Halfpenny Green. They have their own tee shirts and banners and this Christmas they are hoping to produce hampers with all these in plus a specially selected vine that can be planted in your garden or given to a friend. Yes, Chateau Tooting which started life as a guerilla grape grower is becoming a brand. If this works out and enough people buy the selected vine (maybe a Rondo for red or Seyval for white) then Urban Wine could in a few years produce a single varietal wine in addition to their present Chateau Tooting cocktail.